Federal Legislation and Regulation

Federal Legislation and Regulation

At Farm Sanctuary, we spend our lives with farm animals, and we know them as individuals. We would no more eat a chicken or a pig than we would eat a kitten or a puppy. However, we also recognize that legislation and regulation can lessen the suffering of millions — or even billions — of animals with one new law or regulation.

Follow the “take action now” links below for more information on each bill or regulation and appropriate contact information.

Stop Antibiotic Use in Farm Animals

Farm animals receive far more antibiotics than humans do in the United States, both to keep animals alive in conditions so filthy and disease-promoting that they would die in massive numbers without the drugs and also to make them grow more quickly. The Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act (PAMTA), would stop the use of antibiotics that are also used in human medicine.

Close the Federal Meat Research Center

On January 20, 2015 the New York Times broke the story of the U.S. Meat Animal Research Center in Nebraska, which is tormenting animals—with more than $22 million in taxpayer dollars for 2014.

At this lab, workers without medical or veterinary degrees are chopping open animals, “sometimes doing two or more major surgical operations on the same animal.”

And to repeat: Not a single one of these workers has a medical or veterinary degree.

The facts and anecdotes uncovered by the Times are gut-wrenching.

For example, a former worker tells of a pig who was “thrashing and gagging” as another worker tried to extract lung tissue from her. The worker doing the operation, “seemed to be getting some kind of enjoyment out of this thing, talking and shouting at the animal, ‘How do you like that, pig?’”